If they've already paved paradise and put up a parking lot, an innovative way to use an vacant lot or urban space in decay is to introduce an old shipping container. We've noticed container shops and restaurants popping up from San Francisco to London to Christchurch, New Zealand. The mall of the future, it seems, is one that brings resourceful architecture and small businesses together. Here are 10 of our favorite uses of castoff containers.

Above: Opened in 2011 in Shoreditch, London, Boxpark is a shopping mall made from stripped and refitted shipping containers for a series of low-cost, pop-up stores (the mall will be open through 2015).

Above: An inspired shipping container pop-up restaurant from an unexpected source: Hellmann's mayonnaise company opened a 45-square-meter restaurant to serve free sandwiches for a day in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Above: Evergreen Brickworks, an environmental community center in Toronto, has a welcome hut made from a repurposed 20 foot shipping container that architect Levitt Goodman renovated and painted bright green. He installed a rainwater chain to direct excess water into a rain barrel on the side of the hut. See Photograph by Ben Rahn via Inhabitat.

Above: In collaboration with Muvbox, a company that specializes in shipping container conversions, product designers Guillaume Noiseux and Guillaume Sasseville opened Porchetta Box, a temporary restaurant in Montreal during the summer of 2012. Photographs courtesy of Guillaume Noiseux via Design Boom.

Above: In London's Southbank, Softroom Architects designed a two-story building from eight shipping containers for Mexican restaurant Wahaca. The upper story container has an outdoor terrace on one side and large sliding glass doors on the other. Photograph by Joseph Burns via Design Boom.